THE AIR-HEAD LIBERAL POLITICAL DISORDER
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.5529/pub_detail.asp
Exclusive: The Airhead Liberal Political Disorder
Robert Weissberg
On Wednesday, February 10th, the American Psychiatric Association proposed its latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the Association’s official, encyclopedia-like catalogue of psychiatric disorders. The DSM’s certification has enormous consequences for dispensing therapy, insurance payments, future research and peoples’ self-definition. This latest DSM is, however, only a proposal designed to solicit public feedback and after preliminary trials, the final version will be published in 2013. Inclusion or exclusion can be tricky business, often reflecting both shifting politics and social conditions. DSM’s mental illness catalogue once included homosexuality; today, “Internet Addiction†and “lack of sexual interest†are candidates for admission.
Despite these labors, opportunities for adjustments remain and this may be a once-in-a-generation opportunity for right thinking people to confront a specific, widespread mental disorder that has long driven us crazy: what I call Airhead Liberalism Political Disorder or ALPD for short. This is not a coherent ideology like Socialism or Marxism. Rather, it is a style of political engagement whose purpose is psychological satisfaction independent of actual of costs or benefits. In a nutshell: if advocating a policy makes me feel good about myself, it’s a good policy. The disorder resembles self-medicating drug addiction where addicts will do anything, no matter how injurious, to achieve transitory “highs.†What especially drives right-thinking people to buy Maalox at Costco or take Valium is that Airhead Liberals sufferers are impervious to reason or evidence, no matter how persuasive.
Consider one ALDP outcropping: manic grab-bag environmentalism. The typical ALPD afflicted activist is determined with religious-like devotion to save polar bears, rescue tropic dwellers from heat prostration, reverse glacial melting, restore the rain forests, protect world’s cities from floods, eliminate skin cancer, reduce the incidence of Hurricanes, require non-polluting electric cars and otherwise stop impending doom. It is not that these desires are necessarily evil. What defines the disorder is that true-believers cannot be budged, let alone consider possible non-environmental paths to achieving these goals. Nor can he or she be enticed to consider the full consequences of any of these demands or achievability. They worship the god of Nike – just do it. Saving the planet just feels good, so who wants to hear that the polar bear population is actually increasing, not all glaciers are melting or that cold kills more people than heat so global warming will save lives? Worse, imagine these feel-good activists learning that millions for rescuing polar bears could be better spent giving away sun block to millions of humans? Not much feel-good moral high ground there.
If the Airhead Liberal disorder were just some neurotic inclination akin to compulsively buying fake designer pocketbooks there would be no problem, at least generally. Alas, that millions of Americans seriously suffer from Airhead Liberal Political Disorder makes it a serious public problem. These self-indulgent do-gooders are a standing voting bloc for any pandering-inclined politician to expand government. Its nefarious budget-breaking, debt-building impact can be seen in the nosy clamor to lift up the poor into the middle class, provide free medical care to the uninsured, eliminate racial and gender gaps in education, force banks to lend to deadbeats, require businesses to hire according to color and sex and virtually every other item on today’s get-Washington-to-do-it space cadet agenda. Again: it is not that these goals are prima facie unworthy. It is the intellectual shallowness of these demands, their divorce from hard reality, their staggering cost apart from specified benefits that is so dangerous.
Let’s help all those psychiatrists working on the next DSM by offering some precise, clinical traits associated with the disorder. First, since those with Airheads pursue politics solely to achieve a moral high, they cannot rationally explain a policy’s benefits other than “it seems like a good idea.†Everything is flippant and superficial – No hard-to-digest facts please, we’re Airhead liberals – as if ALPD were a disability that excused all intellectual obligations. Their favored slogans perfectly expose the mentality. Foreign Policy: War is Not the Answer. Racial or ethnic strife: Hate is not a Family Value. Medical care: People Not Profits. Predictably, the bumper sticker is the perfect policy manifesto. Notice how Airheads decorate their cars with them, poking along so other drivers can carefully read these “deep†messages and then allow others to overtake them so as to see the smug “virtuous†driver.
The corollary of this lazy shallowness is a complete disdain for finance. Numbers are boring, and important numbers are the most boring! How can one possibly secure the moral high by slogging through cost accounting, conflicting budget estimates and all the other financial drudgery? Indeed, for truly impassioned Airhead liberals the phrase “we cannot afford it†does not instigate a statistical rejoinder; it is perceived as a ruse to be met with “yes we can since it is so very important that we must do it!†For believers compelled to “do good†regardless of resources, economics is truly the dismal science since hours spent scrutinizing numbers is a downer.
Second, Airhead Liberal activists suffer from severe attention deficit disorder. Crusades come and go like one night stands. While a professional lobbyist spends years learning the ropes on boring tax law, the Airhead liberal may take only a month to “master†gay marriage, hate speech laws, discrimination against the handicapped, sheltering the homeless, banning trans fats, protecting baby seals, providing amnesty for illegal immigrants, horrific conditions for farm animals, absence of female role models in school textbooks, distributing free condoms to combat AIDS, supplying government run daycare, renewable green energy, banning excessive pesticide use, and the peril of highly sugared breakfast cereals. The frustrating upshot of this promiscuity is that rejoinders quickly become obsolete. By the time a clear-thinking person has assembled the damning evidence on, say, mainstreaming the handicapped, the ALPD sufferer has moved on to banning nuclear weapons. Their happiness is thus Darwinian – like some viruses, they can’t be defeated since they mutate so quickly.
Third, those with the Airhead Disorder are addicted to Utopianism independent of what the pursuit might cost. Think universal disarmament, ending world hunger, decent housing for everyone and all students testing above average. More recent is promoting world peace by teaching youngsters to cherish diversity. In fact, the more unobtainable and idealistic the goal, the more alluring it becomes. After all, attempting to achieve some small, practical improvement can hardly produce the necessary feel-good buzz. To Airhead Liberals the criticism “that’s unrealistic” or “it will never work” is a compliment since it confirms the commitment’s high moral purpose. Anybody can embrace mundane programs assisting few people, but only the purest of souls will insist upon sweeping solution for the hopelessly insolvable. Why favor modest scholarships for top students? Too practical and worthwhile, so not much glory there. Demand instead that Harvard and Yale award full scholarships plus expensive support services to the dull-witted unlikely to survive their freshman year. That harebrained nostrum demonstrates the highest of the high dedication to improving the world, and that this demand is oblivious to costs only multiplies the ego gratification. It is practicality the antithesis of political virtue for the ALPD sufferer.
Our analysis is, obviously, only the first step and much research remains to be done, especially uncovering the root causes of ALPD to facilitate early intervention. And let’s be blunt, while “low levels of sexual interest†is certainly a pressing psychiatric problem to many, Airhead Liberalism Policy Disorder is an urgent national problem. Who needs a government running helter-skelter chasing one Utopian version after the next, many of which inflict more harm than good, while driving the country into bankruptcy? So, my right-thinking friends, before buying yet more Maalox or renewing your Valium prescription, let alone forming a support group for distraught family members, take a moment or two and send a note to the American Psychiatric Association demanding that ALPD be included in the next DSM. Here’s the address:
American Psychiatric Association
1000 Wilson Boulevard
Suite 1825
Arlington, VA 22209 Email: apa@psych.org
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Robert Weissberg is emeritus professor of political science, University of Illinois-Urbana and currently an adjunct instructor at New York University Department of Politics (graduate). He has written many books, the most recent include The Limits of Civic Activism, Pernicious Tolerance: How teaching to “accept differences” undermines civil society and the forthcoming, Bad Students, Not Bad Schools: How both the Right and the Left have American education wrong (early 2010). Besides writing for professional journals, he has also written for magazines like the Weekly Standard and currently contributes to various blogs.
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